


First Things First

by storiesfortravellers



Category: Arrow (TV 2012)
Genre: Community: trope_bingo, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Mild Kink, Moral Ambiguity, Trust
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-03-09
Updated: 2013-03-09
Packaged: 2017-12-04 19:39:41
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,124
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/714340
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/storiesfortravellers/pseuds/storiesfortravellers
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Diggle’s POV on their relationship and why they need each other, with hints at the morally gray aspects of their work. References to past Oliver/Tommy and Oliver/Laurel.  For Trope Bingo for the Mind Control square.</p>
            </blockquote>





	First Things First

He is the best warrior I have ever seen.

And with what I’ve seen, that’s saying something. 

The skills are there. Ridiculous skills, skills that take my breath away with all the things they could be used for. It’s not just the ability to hit the target, but the ability to never accidentally hit anything else. That’s what makes or breaks it.

But war is not just about skills. It’s about the cause.

And Oliver has a cause. He will die and kill for this cause and never doubt that he’s right.

Of course it’s my cause too, now. We’ll see where that leads us.

The other thing that makes him the best warrior, the most important thing?

He can survive. 

I trust him. Even when he’s being an idiot, even when he’s a wreck, I trust him to come back to me alive. Maybe by a thread, but still.

I couldn’t be part of this if I didn’t trust him to come back, if he were any less of a warrior.

So I guess I’ll have to make sure he never is. 

 

***** 

He never talks to me about the island. He never talks to anyone about it. 

If I were better, I wouldn’t find this comforting. I would want him to talk to his sister and friends and the dozen most expensive therapists his mother could find.

It really wouldn’t be a bad idea.

But he doesn’t talk and I sure as hell know not to ask.

The first time he showed me his scars, he glanced at me, gauging my reaction. There wasn’t much of one, really. I wasn’t surprised; a kid like that doesn’t become the man he is now without some scar tissue. Really, they weren’t even the worst scars I’d seen.

Now he doesn’t think twice about showing me. No one else can say that. 

I shouldn’t be glad about it. But I am.

***** 

I’m not the jealous sort, really. In fact, I hope he finds someone to be with someday. Maybe someone who can accept his mission, maybe someone when the mission is done.

What we have is complicated. There’s trust and there’s sex and most days there’s friendship, but it’s not the endgame for either of us, and we both know it. 

Another thing we both know and haven’t said; our joint venture ends up with us both in a ditch somewhere, 9 times out of 10. 

But there’s always that 1 out of 10. So I wouldn’t mind if he found someone. Someone who could heal some of those wounds. Not so many that he’s soft, that he’s no longer him. But some.

He still carries a torch for Laurel, I know. But I also know that there are some things that break that you just can’t get back. 

Truthfully, I don’t like the way she messes with his head. He doesn’t think straight when she’s involved, he can’t say no to her. But I don’t blame him, not really. They have history. Besides, I see why he would fall for her. She goes up against the toughest, most evil sons of bitches in the city with nothing but a briefcase full of legal briefs. Truth be told, I respect the hell out of her.

Even if it rips Oliver’s heart out every time he sees her.

Tommy, on the other hand….

I saw them once, on the couch in their office at the club. They didn’t see me in the doorway, though. They were drunk and pretending that they liked running a club, that they were young enough to still love the scene. Oliver kissed him.

Tommy kissed back. It was obvious that this was how it was between them before the island, drunken messing around when no one else was around.

I wasn’t jealous. Not really. There was something, though, a visceral course of wrong that went through me. I didn’t like what I saw. Because when it comes down to it, Tommy is a naïve, spoiled boy. Likeable, hell even charming, but he’s not fit for the man Oliver has become.

It was Tommy who pulled away, mumbling something about Laurel, and isn’t that whole thing a mess. Tommy ran out the other door, and Oliver sat there, down. It wasn’t clear if he was down about Tommy leaving or about being reminded of Laurel. 

I gave it a minute and left him to his thoughts. Sometimes a man needs to be alone. 

***** 

We had slept together for a while before there was any actual sleeping. He’d usually rather walk away and sleep alone in a locked room. Not that I blame him. 

Sometimes he would stay, though. He would lie there passively until I pulled him closer, and then he’d curl up like I was the closest thing he knew to home. By the morning he’d be sprawled out, three-fourths of the covers tangled in his legs, but it was small as far as annoyances go. At least when it comes to him.

Once, he almost refused to sleep next to me again. He was having a nightmare. Bad, you know? And I was stupid, I tried to wake him up by shaking him.

Then I was on the ground, struggling to breathe as his arm was on my neck.

I saw it then, what the criminals see. Eyes, cold as iron, willing me dead.

I kneed him in the balls and when his arm loosened I managed to get a couple inches of room for my neck.

“It’s me, Oliver. It’s me.” I was gasping, my throat felt like it had been through the wringer just from talking.

He stared at me for a second, confused, and then leapt off of me. He looked scared.

I swear, in that moment he looked like a child.

He apologized, I told him it was fine. I told him again a few more times, and we went back to bed.

He didn’t sleep next to me for a while then. Finally, I had to tell him that I was a trained soldier and could take anything he dished out and it was an insult to imply otherwise. I told him that I had gotten him good even though I didn’t know what was happening, and now that I was prepared, I’d probably defend myself just fine against a half-asleep Hood and that he’d better remember that I’m his equal partner and not someone he has to protect. I told him, basically, that I was pissed.

He usually does what I tell him to when I’m pissed.

So he’s back in my bed again. Once in a while. 

But I notice that when he goes out with other people, whatever he does with him, he always sleeps at home.

I don’t blame him for being scared of himself. Hell, if I’m honest, I’m scared of him too sometimes, of what he’s capable of if he ever flew off the handle, if he ever uncoiled that tightly packed control.

But I wish he weren’t scared to sleep next to someone else, to find comfort in those warm arms of the boys and girls he dates. I wouldn’t enjoy seeing it, but it would be good for him.

I’m not holding my breath, though.

***** 

He and I have always been about the mission. 

It’s probably for the best. If I weren’t here for the mission, if I were here just for him, he probably wouldn’t have let me in in the first place. If any of his other relationships are a clue.

So it’s the mission. And if I comfort him, it’s only to make him stronger. If I ask him to be better, it’s because a better man leads a better cause. If I ask him to lean his body into mine, let me know every inch of him, if I get him to let me into his body, whispering in his ear until I’m just as surely in his mind, then it’s only because….

Because we both have needs?

Because we’re both alone, probably.

Sometimes he asks me to hold him down. To tell him that he belongs to me. 

I do what he asks. We both know he won’t be held down a second longer than he wants to be. But he hasn’t panicked yet, not during sex. Not when I’m working over his body, not when I’m pushing his body where I want it to be. I think maybe this is his refuge, his respite from constant vigilance, from being a half-second away from a defensive stance and a drawn bow.

I think he needs this.

I think maybe I’m starting to, too.

***** 

There are times when I have seen him very close to breaking. Sometimes he just didn’t have the strength to conceal it. Sometimes, I’m almost sure, he willingly let me see. I think maybe I am his only comfort that doesn’t try to make him forget who he is.

There are times when he comes to me because he knows exactly how he’s acting, he knows that he’s pin-close to taking a step too far. He comes to me because he knows I’m the only one that can make him get his head on straight.

When we started, I basically told him that my job would be to keep him in line. If he’s a weapon, I make sure it stays clean and shoots straight. I make sure he doesn’t turn into a bad guy with a good reason. 

He accepted this. Now, he doesn’t even make a secret of the fact that he needs this.

At this point, I probably need his trust almost as much as he needs my judgment.

Sometimes I wonder how this all might have turned out differently. If the man who came back from the island had been a little less disciplined, a little more vengeful. If he allowed himself to enjoy the kill just a little more than a warrior should. If he drove himself further and further away from everyone, with no one and nothing as his compass.

I take it seriously, this power he has given me. 

Sometimes, I think that if I asked him to kill someone for me, he would. No questions asked. He trusts me that much.

I wouldn’t abuse this power. But some people would. It scares me to think that a weapon like Oliver would trust anyone this much.

Honestly, sometimes I think that if I encouraged him to follow his worst instincts, if I whispered in his ear again and again that he should be happy a bad guy is dead… I think I could turn him into a serial killer.

I don’t know why I think of things like this. I don’t want to think of things like this. 

I’m not being insulting when I call Oliver a weapon, by the way. I don’t mean it that way. He is a weapon, but I know that he’s more than that too. 

He was once a man with a family and friends and a life in this community, and then, when he was far away, he became a weapon. 

Now he’s both. And he’s still trying to figure out how that all works.

He’s decided he want me to help shape this new man he needs to become. And I want to. I want to remind him of his priorities, I want to tell him when he’s off the rails. I want to hold him when he’s injured in ways that no one else can know. But most of all I want to turn him into the kind of man who can save this city.

He wanted to be this man before I ever came along, of course. But sometimes I wonder if I’m pushing him the right way, if maybe he wouldn’t be better off without the mission. If maybe he should try to heal from the scars that made him a weapon. Oliver trusts, he trusts me like no one has ever trusted me, even in the war. Sometimes I think I could turn him into anything. Sometimes I think that if I wanted to turn him into a man who hardly ever thought about killing wrongdoers -- a normal man -- I could.

Not that I ever would. Oliver is the best warrior I have ever seen, and you don’t waste something like that.

You know, sometimes, I look at myself, and it’s a hard look. Sometimes I wonder if I’ve grown too attached to Oliver’s strength.

But sometimes, I wonder if I’ve grown too attached to his brokenness.

I never think about it too long, though. There’s always the next mission to prepare for, after all.

And the mission has to come first.


End file.
